The Bloody French Do It Again

Leave it to the French, this time in the person of film director Christian Chaudet, to vandalize utterly yet another masterpiece: Stravinsky's lovely and eloquent fantasy-cum-morality-tale mini-opera, Le Rossignol (The Nightingale). In a computer-animated / live-action film version of Le Rossignol aired by PBS on its "Great Performances" series, Chaudet imposes on the opera a non-stop barrage of frantically busy, socially-culturally-politically "relevant" visual claptrap cum sound effects that clutter and bloat Stravinsky's elegant work almost beyond recognition. What this grotesque and ugly piece of high-tech Eurotrash could not destroy, however, (not totally, at any rate) is Stravinsky's expressively on-point music (nicely conducted by James Conlon), and Natalie Dessay's vocally brilliant nightingale, the sound of which, all by itself, makes suffering through this insufferable hour-long production almost worthwhile. If you missed it this time around, look for a rerun in your local PBS listings. Or better yet, buy the Conlon / Dessay EMI recording that this loathsome film vandalized for its main soundtrack.